Grade Level: 6th, 7th and 8th Grades
Subject: Science, Art, Language Arts
Duration: 35-55 minutes
Materials: Clipboard, pencil, Rye Wilderness nature search sheet
Florida Sunshine State Standards: SC.A.1.1, SC.B.1.6, SC.F.1.2, SC.G.1.2, SC.G.1.7, SC.H.1.1, SC.H.1.2, SC.H.3.2, LA.B.2.2.1, LA.B.2.2.3, LA.C.1.2.4, SS.A.6.2.2, SS.A.6.2.3, MA.B.3.2.1
Overview: Students complete a nature search worksheet while walking through natural scrub habitat in Rye Wilderness Park. The major purpose of this activity is for students to recognize that all environments have characteristic life forms and to acquaint students with the distinction between native and non-native plants. Students will also become familiar with the settlement history of Rye, Florida. Teachers will keep the worksheet for further classroom study.
Objectives: Students will investigate the habitats within Rye Wilderness Park. Students will generalize that each habitat has characteristic life forms and suggest ways that the environment affects the life forms that occupy it. Students will identify native and non-native plants.
Social Study Objective: Students will understand the influence of geography on Florida settlement history.
Background: Rye Wilderness Park is the site of a scrub habitat restoration. A biologist studying the Florida scrub jay population discovered 6 scrub jays on the adjacent Rutland Ranch property in the summer of 2003. Scrub jays have specific habitat requirements, one of which is trees no higher than about 18 feet because predators such as hawks start moving in. Historically, naturally occurring fire will maintain the tree height in the scrub ecosystem. The cattle ranch next-door practiced burning to keep the rangeland optimum for cattle. This practice also assists the scrub jay. In Rye Wilderness Park, there had been no fire for decades. The scrub had evolved to a mature sand pine scrub with trees exceeding 100 feet in height. The Manatee County Conservation Lands Management team harvested the mature sand pine in August 2003 because a fire at this point would have been catastrophic. Fuel loads, including dead branches, vines and other debris had built up over the decades. A fire was just too risky.
Since the pine harvest in 2003, much of the scrub vegetation has returned. Sunlight reached the open sands for the first time in many years. The seeds that had been waiting for sun and rain sprouted gloriously throughout 2004. The land managers plan to return to a natural schedule of fire every 7-10 years or so.
Florida scrub has a very distinct plant community dominated by shrubs and dwarf oak trees, with an occasional pine mixed in. Other plants typically found in scrub include low palmettos, hickories, and Florida rosemary. Scattered throughout the scrub are bright, open patches of bare sand dotted with small herbaceous plants and lichens. Some of the shrubs, small plants, and trees that live in Florida scrub occur nowhere else in the world!
Living among the plants are many animals—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and spiders. Among these organisms are forty species of plants, four species of vertebrates, and at least forty-six species of arthropods that are found in Florida scrub and nowhere else on earth. These species are well adapted to life in the dry, sandy nutrient-poor scrub soil.
See also “Scrub Diversity” background p. 64
History of Rye, Florida: Tucked back in these scrublands along the Rye Branch of the Manatee River at the turn of the century was a thriving settlement of up to 70 families, a post office, school, and cemetery. Erasmus Rye came to Florida from Hanover County, Virginia in the mid-1840’s and fought in the skirmishes of the 3rd Seminole War in and around Manatee County. He met and married Mary Lucebia Williams, age 17, on November 24, 1861. They planned to homestead land at Oak Knoll bout 13 miles east of Parrish, but their plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War. Erasmus joined the confederate Army on April 10, 1862 and they gave up the homestead. Mary went to live with her parents James Greene Williams and Mary Isabell Williams in their home on the east side of Rye Branch, a beautiful spring-fed stream. This was where Mary gave birth to daughter Mary J. called Mollie.
Unknown to his new family, Erasmus was taken prisoner of war at Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. He was freed 2 ½ years later in a prisoner exchange at New Orleans. When he returned to his family, Erasmus and Mary remained at the home on the Rye Branch. Mary’s parents moved west to Frog Creek and the Erasmus Rye family took over the Williams homestead. Soon another daughter named Annie E. was born and then a son William in 1866. At age 13 William helped his father and carpenter Levi Thomas to build the fine cracker-style home that was known as the Rye homestead. A detached kitchen was built as well. A detached kitchen was considered prudent, as it was the most likely place for a fire to start.
The community soon grew with the logging of timber in the surrounding area. Florida pine was plentiful and supplied the country with lumber and turpentine. In the mid-1880’s Rye was in its heyday. Most of the families had cattle. They grew citrus, squashes, sweet potatoes, collards and grains. There was a gristmill on Rye Branch. Without electricity, all foods had to be eaten fresh or somehow preserved. Spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg were popular because in their whole form, they stayed fresh for months.
A local businessman named Sam Mitchell platted a subdivision and decided to change the town’s name to Mitchellville. Unfortunately for Mr. Mitchell, the U.S. Postal Service already supplied mail to a Florida town named Mitchellville, so the name of Rye remained.
In 1910 the citizens of Rye benefited from a federal government dredging of the Upper Manatee River. This deepened the channel and allowed larger steamships to pick up lumber and other supplies provided by the village to the world of trade. Sadly, this was the end of the steamboat era, and within a few years the town became isolated once again. By 1929 even the post office closed, and the remaining settlers eventually all moved away.
By the mid-1980’s no one bothered to follow the trail about a mile around the bend to the single abandoned homestead and cemetery that remained. No one, that is, except late-night partiers looking for a place to hide. On the evening of May 11, 1988 the Braden River Fire Department was called to a blaze that completely obliterated this historic home site. Fire Chief Henry Sheffield called the blaze “suspicious”. The Erasmus Rye home, built by Levi Thomas, Erasmus and son Will Rye in 1879, burned to the ground and left only a trace of twisted metal roof to tell the tale of a once-thriving community.
Sources:
Rye Family Historical Notes from the staff of Rye Wilderness Park, Manatee County Conservation Lands Management.
Newspaper articles from May 12, 1988:
Dale White, Sarasota Herald Tribune “Manatee Life” column
L. Wayne Hicks, Bradenton Herald “Fire Destroys Historic Rye House.”
“Eating History on the Manatee River” by Stephanie Kubilius.
Suggested Procedure:
1. Discuss the diversity of wildlife. Make sure students understand that wildlife includes insects, spiders and other invertebrates as well as birds, fish reptiles, mammals and amphibians.
2. Explain native and non-native plants and tell students you will be pointing out various plants on the walk and they should make note of these on their worksheet.
3. Ask students to point out wildlife that they may see along the way. Explain that in order to view wildlife, the class must be as quiet as possible on the trail.
4. Complete the nature search worksheet by making observations and recording what you see including plant life, and animal life.
5. At the Rye Cemetery discuss the history of this site (see background). Be sure to point out headstones and “do the math” to discover the ages of the family members buried here.
6. Be sure to give Nature Search forms to teacher at end.
